


Mrs. Hudson's Gift

by MeerkatOrHedgehog



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Established Relationship, Fluff, M/M, Minor Angst, Mrs. Hudson has surprising depths, unexpected gifts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-29
Updated: 2013-06-29
Packaged: 2017-12-16 12:30:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,104
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/862053
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MeerkatOrHedgehog/pseuds/MeerkatOrHedgehog
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mrs. Hudson gives John and Sherlock a very unexpected gift.  Also, John and Sherlock could win prizes for how loud they are during sex.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mrs. Hudson's Gift

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Español available: [El obsequio de la Sra. Hudson](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1145628) by [ashleyundomiel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ashleyundomiel/pseuds/ashleyundomiel)



> This is the very first story that I've posted in the Sherlock fandom. It's not betad or brit-picked, and constructive criticism is very welcome. Any comments at all would mean the world to me! Also, if anyone would like to beta or brit-pick for me, I would love to hear from you! So, I hope you enjoy!
> 
> Disclaimer: All knowledge of the sex toy discussed and it's effectiveness for the purposes described is purely theoretical on my part.

John had never been so surprised in his life. Well, surprise seemed a thoroughly inadequate word to describe what he was feeling. Shocked seemed like a better choice. He was unquestionably stunned and a bit dazed. This was definitely shock.

He was also fairly certain that he would never recover from the blush that he was currently experiencing and would be walking around with a red face for the rest of his life. As a doctor he knew it wasn’t possible to a) die of embarrassment or b) have a blush become permanent, but either option seemed likely at the moment.

He looked down at the card that had come with the gift, carefully avoiding looking at the present itself, and reread it.

‘John and Sherlock, I am so happy for the two of you. Have fun, but do try to remember how easily sound travels in these old buildings. Maybe this could help? All my love, Mrs. Hudson’

John’s eyes reluctantly found their way back to the gift, the gift that had looked so innocent when he’d found it on the kitchen table after returning from a long day at the surgery. It had been wrapped in silver paper and tied with a black velvet bow. Now that he thought about it, John realised that maybe the wrapping job should have been a clue to as to what was inside. He knew that Sherlock would have been able to make a deduction from it, look what he’d done to poor Molly over her gift.

But John wasn’t Sherlock Holmes the world’s only Consulting Detective, so when he had opened the box and pulled the filmy silver tissue paper aside he had been thoroughly unprepared for what was revealed. It was a ball gag. A bright red ball with black leather strap gag for, as the box said, the beginner in BDSM bedroom play.

John had a number of questions running through his head. Had Mrs. Hudson gone to a sex shop to buy this for them? He couldn’t picture that, but he also couldn’t picture her going online and shopping for a ball gag either. How on earth had she come up with this idea? Was there something about him and Sherlock that suggested that BDSM sex toys were the perfect gift for them? Was there something about Mrs. Hudson and her own bedroom… no, best not to finish that thought. How loud were they that Mrs. Hudson had decided to let them know that they needed to keep it down and to do it this way and not with a quiet word about the apparently paper-thin walls? Was this a serious suggestion or just his landlady’s idea of a teasing way to give them a hint?

John didn’t have the answers to those questions and he had a feeling he was better off not knowing the answer to a couple of them. He had more significant things to consider, like how he was ever going to be able to look Mrs. Hudson in the eye again. 

Yes, they were all adults, but Mrs. Hudson was a mother figure to both him and Sherlock, and it was never comfortable to have your sex life out in the open in front of a parent. Much less when that parental figure then went and bought a sex toy for you and your partner. There were boundaries, although Mrs. Hudson had never been particularly good with those.

Of one thing he was utterly certain: he and Sherlock would be moving to the upstairs bedroom that night. Hopefully an entire floor would help with the noise situation. He knew Sherlock probably wouldn’t care, and he wasn’t ashamed of the noise they made, but he knew that his ability to be uninhibited in the bedroom would be severely affected if the thought of Mrs. Hudson getting an earful were prominent in his head.

Just then he heard the sound of Sherlock’s footsteps coming up the stairs.

“John?”

“In the kitchen, Sherlock,” he replied, turning to face the doorway as his partner came into the room.

Sherlock’s gaze quickly swept over him and the discarded wrapping paper and present on the kitchen table.

“I see Mrs. Hudson has finally reached her limit when it comes to the noise. I knew she was close, the circles under her eyes indicating poor or interrupted sleep, no tea-making or cleaning for a week now, but this is a rather unexpected way of letting us know. She has surprising depths our Mrs. Hudson,” was Sherlock’s calm assessment before he turned to go back into the sitting room.

“You were expecting this?” John asked a little more loudly than he meant to as he followed Sherlock to where he was now removing his coat and scarf.

“Not this exactly,” was Sherlock’s calm response, “but yes, I knew that today or by tomorrow at the latest she would let us know that we’ve been interfering with her sleep. The earplugs haven’t been as useful as the advertising would lead you to believe.”

“Earplugs? What earplugs? And how did you know…”

“I saw the box in her trash bin. There was no other logical explanation for her to have needed to buy them. The only thing that has changed recently in terms of an increase in the sound level at night has been the delightful racket that we’ve been making since we got together.” Sherlock really could be so infuriatingly blithe about his deductions. Especially considering this deduction was related to the apparently building-disturbing din they were making during sex and the problems it was creating for Mrs. Hudson and who knew whom else.

“Well if you knew this, why haven’t you said something to me before now?” John demanded. “We could have worked out a solution, and Mrs. Hudson could have been sleeping peacefully and not leaving ball gags as gifts for us!”

“For a start, I would have missed your reaction, John,” Sherlock replied, still calm as can be. “I wish I’d been here to see it from the beginning. It’s so disappointing to think that I’ve missed something so truly priceless.”

“That’s not the point, Sherlock,” John growled at him. “Why did you choose not to act to rectify a situation that has caused not inconsiderable discomfort for our landlady? A woman who looks after us as if we were her own family, who cares about us and has only ever wished us well? Who does not deserve to suffer in any way? Why haven’t you said something to me so we could do something about this? Why?”

Sherlock suddenly looked a bit more serious and bit less amused by John’s reaction to the gift.

“I didn’t want to upset you, John. Mrs. Hudson is important to me, but you are even more critical. I love the way you are during sex, the way you are during sex with me. I wasn’t ready to lose that yet, and I knew that I could figure out a solution that would allow Mrs. Hudson to get some sleep.”

“Upset me?” John queried. “You –“

“Yes, you know, and you’re upset. You’re embarrassed by how loud we are together. That other people can hear us. You’re a extremely private man, John, and your sex life, your sex life with another man, is something you’d rather other people didn’t know about, much less have very boisterous proof of.”

John cut him off before he could go any further. “Sherlock. Sherlock, you’ve got it wrong.”

“No, I –“

“Yes, Sherlock you’ve got things the wrong way round,” John continued, gently but firmly. “I’m not embarrassed about how loud we are together during sex. It’s brings me pleasure to have extremely vocal confirmation that you enjoy being with me and find satisfaction in the things we do together. Heck, it’s extremely flattering and quite the ego boost. And as for myself, I’ve never been quiet during sex, but with you it’s on a whole other level of pleasure, and I would be a fool to complain about that. And it’s not just the physical that makes it so pleasurable; it’s the fact that I’m with you. Knowing that it’s you provoking those sensations, being able to be that close with you, well the mental factor is beyond anything I’ve ever known before.”

John continued, “I am a truly private person, Sherlock. I think that my private life is my own and nobody else’s business. But it’s not about shame, Sherlock. Never think that it comes from shame. I’m not upset because Mrs. Hudson got an earful of us together, she never cared about that anyway, and I’m not upset that anybody else might have overheard us together either. I’m upset because Mrs. Hudson has had her sleep disturbed and is so exhausted from it that she’s given us this gift just so she can hopefully get some rest.”

Sherlock was looking a bit stunned at John’s speech. “So – “

“This has nothing to do with me being embarrassed about being with a man, being with you or with how we make enough noise to alert a lot of people to the fact that we’re having absolutely fantastic sex together. I’m so very happy and proud to be with you, Sherlock, and I don’t care who knows it. It’s just that I think of Mrs. Hudson as a mother, and the last thing I tend to want to contemplate is my mother overhearing me having sex that’s so loud it’s keeping her up at night. Anyone else can go hang. Or take a flying leap, I really don’t care. I want you, Sherlock, and no one else. I just want for Mrs. Hudson to be able to get a good night’s rest, that’s all. The bottom line is that I can and will get over any awkwardness that stems from this with Mrs. Hudson, but she needs to be able to get some sleep. She’s not a young woman and I won’t have her health suffer, especially as it’s something that we can do something about.”

John paused and looked at Sherlock who appeared to be digesting everything that he had said.

“So you aren’t?”

“No, I’m not.”

“Well then, we just need to implement some of the ideas I have for dealing with the situation.” Sherlock was clearly going to pretend that he hadn’t been completely wrong about why John was upset, but John was inclined to let him gloss over that. After all, the daft man had just admitted that he didn’t want to upset John, that John was more important to him than the woman he had thrown a man out a window for and that he loved sex with John and didn’t want to lose that. He’d been afraid, and that brilliant mind of his had come to some very wrong and clearly painful conclusions, so he wasn’t going to tease him about being wrong. Not right now, anyway.

Sherlock continued, “I have some plans for sound proofing and some preliminary designs that should help the bed to be better able to withstand vigorous usage while making less of a racket. Until then, we will move upstairs and let the distance do what it can to help for now. I refuse to change how I am or moderate how I respond to you during sex. Mrs. Hudson will have to be happy with the increased distance and the earplugs I procured for her that are of a much higher quality than she can afford.”

John stepped towards his partner, his lover, his idiot genius, and took his hands in his. Looking up into Sherlock’s eyes he said, very seriously, “Yes, that all sounds very good. I was already going to suggest the move upstairs. But Sherlock, what about the gift? Don’t you think it would be a shame not to test it out and see if it helps?”

John knew he had never seen Sherlock so delightedly astonished. He also had never been dragged up a flight of stairs so quickly in his life.

In the end, it turned out that yes, a ball gag could be a very effective means of volume control. John also needed two weeks before he could manage to look at Mrs. Hudson without turning an extremely vibrant shade of red. It helped that she never said a word about the gift and only ever made an offhand comment about how soundly she had been sleeping about a week after he found her present in the kitchen. She also never said a word when they had contractors in to do the soundproofing. 

The End


End file.
